Reconnaissance
by galliumite
Summary: A short story about a member of the Order Of The Phoenix doing reconnaissance work in Malfoy Manner during the second Wizarding War.


**A/N: Written for Round 2 of the Quidditch League Round 2. Using the Optional prompts:**

 **(spell) Levicorpus**

 **(setting) Malfoy Manor**

 **(character) Charlie Weasley**

 **I hope you enjoy.**

Run.

That was the only thought that Charlie Weasley was processing at the moment. He knew that escape was the only option he had available to him. The only plan that mattered.

Charlie had come to Britain to be with his family, there was a war and his family was in it, that had decided matters for him, that had forced his hand. Once he arrived however, he finally understood how dire the situaion actually was, Dumbledore ,gone for good Harry Potter on the "run", the light was failing fast. The darkness was poisoning the heart of wizarding society. The desperation that those realities brought was the desperation that kept Charlie Weasley fighting, that kept his family fighting. It was that desperation for deliverance that fueled the Order Of The Phoenix, even after Mad-Eye's fall. Even after the ministry's fall.

Run. For Them.

Charlie had started running faster as the thoughts that made up his consciousness grew. He had a reason to keep running. For them.

Once Charlie had settled in Britain, he had joined the Order. Ready to keep the fight alive. But he soon found that the light was without a bearing, the attacks had been orchestrated against them in such a way that it felt as if they were moving from one failure to the next. Hoping for some kind of beacon to rally to. Waiting for deliverance. The frustration, the hopelessness, became too much for the Order members, and a meeting had been called. That meeting had been to pose a plan that could finally deliver them from their sorry state. That could illuminate the light. The plan was to infiltrate Malfoy Manner and to find out exactly what was going on in the opposition camp. The plan was reconnaissance.

The plan was a failure.

The plan meant that none other than Charlie Weasley was in Malfoy manner, running for his life. Why Charlie? The answer was simple, the Order needed to send in somebody that the Death Eaters did not know to look for. They had to send in a magical signature that had not been documented. They had to send in a Romanian dragon keeper. They had to send in Charlie Weasley.

Run. For them. Run. For them. Run. For them. Lost. Run. I'm Lost. Run. Where's the way out? Run... Dead End.

That was it. Charlie had spent an hour, finding out all he needed to know, then he had his cover blown. Then he ran. And now, he'd stopped. He was standing facing a dark wall. A wall without windows, a wall without relief. A wall to stand against. And so Charlie Weasley stood, his back to the wall as the sound of running enemies drew closer... closer... and then they rounded the corner in front of Charlie. There were only two masked figures that rounded the corner. Although even then Charlie could hear others approaching.

And Charlie snapped.

With a roar, the two were unconscious, the two stunners leaving his wand at almost the time, but that was a small victory indeed as three other Death Eaters rounded the corner, emboldened by their numbers. Charlie stopped focusing on individual thoughts, individual feelings. He focused on one thing. Defense.

"PROTEGO" Charlie had to protect himslelf from the volley of curses, surprisingly none of them unforgivables, and then, he had to fight back. Two of the Death Eaters ended up suspended by the ankles. A practical joke in school, that proved to be quite useful in a fight, removing an opponent or two from a fight and using a minimal amount of power in the process. Another curse impacting the protego shield meant that the last Death Eater was open to a quick stunner.

With five Death Eaters down, Charlie found that the sound of more running footsteps was non-existent. He was able to press forward, perhaps even escape before more Death Eaters showed up. Before moving though, Charlie used a quick Accio to get all five wands of the defeated Death Eaters, preventing them from simply recovering and then coming at him from behind. Especially the two that were being held up by the ankles and nothing more that would actually slow them down.

Charlie began to creep through the halls of the Manner, towards what he hoped was the center of the place, towards the door, towards freedom. The halls were all dark, with the odd silhouette at times to indicate a painting or some other wall decoration that was impossible to see in the gloom that filled the halls. It was almost as if the occupants of the Manner disliked light. Go figure. That continued until Charlie saw light. The only portions of the Manner that were lit up were the places that were important at all times. The board room, the entrance hall, and so forth. And while Charlie knew that his previous consuming panic had robbed him of his sense of direction in the Manner, he was fairly certain that had not simply circled back to the board room. Charlie believed that he had found the entrance hall. But what he saw inside that room made him wish he hadn't. At least twenty masked faces, all upturned towards him.

Charlie was standing on the upper landing, with the stair case before him taking him down. towards his goal, and towards those murderous monsters. "PROTEGO!" Charlie cried, needing something to protect him from the coming onslaught. Not that the shield helped when the Cruciatus Curse was what it was up against. Every nerve in Charlie's body ignited at once, engulfing his body in an all consuming pain. His mind practically shut down at the onslaught of the pain, his primal instincts simply telling him to curl up as small as possible and hope for the pain to end.

"This will never end"

That one thought was the only one that emerged through the literal haze that his conscience had become. And Charlie wanted to sob at that. He had lost. It was over. These "people" would never let him live. He was going to be destroyed. It was an odd feeling, having his body in so much terrible, constant pain, and then for the mental anguish to lessen, even as the physical pain increased. The lessening of the mental pain, a fruit of one fact. Charlie Weasley had accepted the inevitable. Presumably he was now under the influence of multiple Cruciatus's, due to the fact that he was in greater physical pain than before. Charlie realised that there was one more thing for him to do. He had a final purpose. They had to know what he knew. The Order had to understand what was going on. At that point, after listening in for an hour on a top secret meeting, Charlie knew that the information he had learnt would be vital in the coming battles. And in order for him to tell them, he had to defend himself. Not from the external, but from his own survival instinct.

Charlie spent entire minutes creating a message, in the meantime, the Death Eaters were cackling mercilessly. The message would tell them everything they needed to know. The message took him so long, because he had to keep applying his basic Occlumency training in order to protect his conscience from his primordial self. He had to keep defending.

And that defense lasted just long enough for him to, after completing the message in his mind, whisper two words.

"Expecto Patronum"

As his dragon patronus flew from his wand, Charlie Weasley curled up into a small ball, and gave up his mind to the growing darkness. The magical exhaustion as a resultof maintaining occlumency for that long meant that he never did feel much more. His heartfelt good byes never to said, because he could not maintain the state of mind required for a patronus long enough to fit in anything more that two words.

"Good bye."


End file.
